22 years ago, Peter Parker married Mary Jane Watson in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21. Many fans rejoiced. But not everyone was filled with glee. A man by the name of Joe Quesada thought that Spider-Man had fallen off track when he had gotten married and therefore, was not a character fans could relate to anymore. Even before Joe became the editor in chief of Marvel Comics, he had made known his disdain for the Spider-Marriage.In 2007, Joey Q had finally set out to end what kept him awake at night (I'm not making this up, he seriously lost sleep due to the marriage of fictional characters) and ended Peter and MJ's wedding in the four part story called One More Day. OMD is widely regarded as one of the worst Spider-Man stories ever printed, if not the worst. Calling it an abomination sin would be a grave understatement. What's worse is that OMD led into Brand New Day and while there are fans that say BND is the best Spidey has been in years, you've also got fans that view BND as one of the darkest periods in Spider-Man history, some even referring to it as part of the dork age. Worse still is that there would be an eventual follow up to OMD, a story most fans would prefer never to revisit, but alas, if we were to find out just how and why Peter and MJ never wed, we would have to get the answers from One Moment in Time, OMIT for short (and possibly a jab at fans by Quesada)
Anything good about part one of this story? Paolo Rivera's art. I've been a big fan of his work and it sucks that he has to illustrate for such a crappy story.
And the bad? every-freaking-thing-else.
Right off the bad, MJ looks like the bad guy. We finally learn what she whispered to Mephisto and it is basically her saying she knows Peter will never agree to this deal, (even though ASM #545 clearly shows him agreeing to it, but then, logic got tossed out the window nearly three years ago in the ASM books) unless she asks him to, and she asks him to leave Peter alone, forever. Let's forget that Mephy has always screwed over those he made a deal with. Johnny Blaze anyone? I digress. So Mephy, presumably makes it seemed like the deal never happened.
Seeing as how Joe Q was the mastermind behind OMD and he'd be the writer, I never had high hopes for OMIT. I knew coming in that the story would be cluster-f bomb of epic proportions. But we're only at part one of the story and it. Is. BAD!
In a sorta, kinda nutshell, a devil pigeon (Mephisto) unlocks the police car door for a crook Spidey just caught and said crook gets free, causing all kinds of mayhem. This climaxes when Spidey goes after the crook, gets hit in the head with a brick, and the crook, which happens to be fat, by the way, lands on Spidey, knocking him out.
Excuse me, but Spidey has taken abuse from plenty of super villains up to this point and still remained conscious. Yet a brick and a fat guy KO him? Sucky writing at it's finest, folks! But hey, you don't have to talk my word for it! A lovely review for part one of OMIT over at Crawl Space does a lovely job, better than what I've done here, of picking this issue a part and giving the 411 for why and how badly it bombed.
Can you believe it? Part one of OMIT and we're already waist deep in this crap storm! And there are three more parts to go? Ugh!!!
Comments
Would be weird if it were some sort of counter-jab at the newspaper strip for keeping the marriage there.
So many of the staff considered marriage a mistake, they still do, only the team of Spider-Girl loved the marriage from the staff as far as I knew, and maybe "Jim Shooter", though the latter did it at first cause the newspaper strip shouldn't go through such an important step up when the main series is not in.
Back to the thing about creators not fond of the marriage, "Gerry Conway" admitted in the TPB of "Death of the Stacy's" that he is fond of "Mary Jane", but in recent interview with one of the members at crawlspace MB he said as well that he doesn't like marriage in comics, it takes away the main joy of it, even "Kurt David Busiek", one of the two geniuses behind "Untold Tales of Spider-Man" considered the marriage to be a mistake, but he also stated that the way they broke the marriage of those two is a mistake as well
I shouldn't really go against the love of the marriage of Peter & MJ, most of my favorite stories have MJ in them, and a big chunk of them have Spidey & MJ married, it was a marriage I loved to read of, still do, yet I still enjoy the way Spider-Man stories are, though he's written very often as an idiot, I just don't overlook the positive in things, I prefer to be fair
WOW, a guy can't sleep cause of the marriage of two fictional people? Now that's a bigger level of geek (or insanity, you can take it either way)
I like "Paolo Rivera" art, JQ art is better, his art of faces here is better than that mentioned in OMD
About the cop part, one fella in Crawlspace pointed out a solid 'WTF?' point in the story, why was the officer not ready? They handle such scum on the streets, they are trained to do so?